The bipartisan bill to designate more than 32,500 acres of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore as wilderness passed the House of Representatives in March 2014, conferring the highest possible level of public land protection on an area known as “

Since the Wilderness Act was passed in 1964, public lands accorded the federal government’s highest level of protection have ranged across 44 states (and Puerto Rico) and covered close to 110 million acres.